


Toy

by MateriaFlower1_1



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 14:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14357826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MateriaFlower1_1/pseuds/MateriaFlower1_1
Summary: Hi everyone!So, as for the numbers in the titles of the chapters - these were prompts from a list I got. The other numbers are scattered around my other prompt fics, I just took the ones that fitted each pairing the best for different fics!Also, I'm not stringently following cannon, and occasionally I'm going completely off-piste





	1. 042. Scarred

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!  
> So, as for the numbers in the titles of the chapters - these were prompts from a list I got. The other numbers are scattered around my other prompt fics, I just took the ones that fitted each pairing the best for different fics!  
> Also, I'm not stringently following cannon, and occasionally I'm going completely off-piste

_042\. Scarred_

"You'll be glad of the hateful things I'll do when you're Queen, and I'm all that stands between you and your beloved King."

But she did not become Queen, nor did Joffery remain her beloved, or king, for long. The vile prince, born not of his father, but his uncle, was cruel and vicious, and as unlike the Knights of fairy tales as possible - just as The Hound had warned her. It was not long after the death of her father and disappearance of her sister that Joffrey turned cruel, no longer concerned with how anyone would view how he treated her. The North was busy fighting a war, too busy to help her escape, and there no longer remained any Northerners but her at court. She was an outcast, by birth and fortune, so unlike how she'd always been until that point in life. She ached for the presence of her sister, or the warm embrace of her mother, or the soft chides of Robb. Anything, to help ease the pain.

But none came, and she was left alone; a sole wolf in a den of lions. It wasn't for months that the truth of his words came back to haunt her. It wasn't her first beating, and it wasn't the most vicious, but it had stripped her more than she'd ever wanted to be, mentally and physically. He'd stepped in, with kind words, and saved her from any deeper shame.

"You'll be glad of the hateful things I'll do."

She was. Indisputably, undeniably, overwhelmingly glad for anything he would do to buffer her pain at the hands of the newly minted 'king'. The bastard boy her father had found, and who had later run off, would be a better king than him, blacksmith's apprentice or no.

She was no longer a Queen in waiting, no longer protected by her dire wolf, abandoned by family. She had acquired fresh scars along her back and arms from her beatings and just waiting for her fate amongst the vicious lions.

"Little bird." The voice was gruff, utterly cruel, but the kindest thing she'd come to know in all the land below the Neck.

She stirred, looking behind her from where she stood at the window, alone in her small room, the only solitude she possessed in the world. Even King's Landing and the sea beyond, it looked flat and plain when she thought of home and the glistening snows of her childhood.

"Yes, S- Clegane?" She still stammered over what to call him; he was the most like a knight she'd known in King's landing, loyal and honourable to her, no matter how gruff he was with his words.

"The King wants you." He almost spat the word king out, a treasonous poison rolling from the mockery of a title.

She steeled herself, preparing for anything - the whims of a teenaged king could be wild, and treacherous. Even with the arrival of his Grandfather, his moods dimmed very little.

She followed him, her face blooming a bruise almost as red as the burns running down the side of his face in a destructive river. She didn't know how much more of this daily torture her body could handle. Soon, she would be scarred beyond recognition and beyond marriage-quality. Then she would be left alone in this world, cooped up like the little bird he said she was, just waiting to die as a shell of herself.

He did not beat this time, or command another to do his dirty work. The vile boy king simply introduced his betrothed, a beautiful girl who was everything she was not - innocent, happy, unscarred and protected by a buffer of roses - and commanded her to be married, for certain this time. And this time, to the very Hound who'd protected her from the very worst, over and over again. From the stiff clench of his jaw, she gathered the Hound already knew, and she had to employ the practice of years to school her face into terror and despair when, in her heart, it spawned with relief. She'd feared he would say the Imp or even that beast known as the Mountain. The Hound was no punishment, but a welcome relief after the cruelty of all others in this bloody castle.

And that is how she came to stand in the grand, golden Sept of Baelor, a yellow cloak about her shoulders and some shard of hope slowly settling into her heart.

Marriage may not have been everything that she'd hoped for as a naive child; all flowers and caring Knights and beautiful children, but he afforded her protection from the cruel king who'd once been her beloved, if not company in the cold, long, lonely nights. He even voiced his treasonous thoughts to her, ones that he knew without even asking that she shared. And not long after their union, a battle came in the black of night. The Queen Mother had seen fit to not invite her, as she surely would've been 'too busy praying for her husband's safe return'. Of course she did, but she mainly looked out of the bleak window and hissed lowly in fear as green fire erupted over the sea. So entranced was she that, when heavy footsteps approached her door, she didn't notice - only the following voice.

"Little Bird," he called, tongue slurring in his mouth and breath vastly short. "Little bird, let's leave. I've had enough of this king, and by now I am the only thing left between him, and you."

She didn't even answer, but nodded, her fingers anxiously fingering the new scar she'd recently acquired on her arm. Even with his name as a form of protection, whenever he was sent away, the nightmare of old would return anew, until she could grovel her way to safety, or he would stumble across her beatings.

"Gather anything you need; quickly."

Without a word more between them, they gathered what they needed, she donned the King's Guard robe he'd once given her, still with his scent embedded in it, and they left, creeping through the castle in the inky night, and leaving the foul city of King's Landing behind not so long after.

With all the nightmares so long ago, all they had to remind them of their strife were the scars they both wore; her around her heart and all over her back, him on his face. Even if their marriage had petered out into flowers, and a new knighthood, and four beautiful children, a small part of them, against their will, would always remain in the scarred heart of King's Landing, and the place where he would stand in defiance of a King for her.


	2. 035. Heat

_035\. Heat_

He had never been one for heat, or fire, or warmth - not since he'd had his face pushed against the flames for his childhood room. Only his sister could bring a little warmth to his insides in the immediate aftermath, with her bright smile. But then he killed her too, and the warmth left Sandor's gut. With Lenore's death, he'd lost the capacity to feel or stand heat. For a long time, at least.

I thought that he was cruel, with a vile mouth and a terrifying countenance at first. He spoke down to me, taught me harsh lessons I should never have learnt at that age. But he saved me, and with a delicacy, he dabbed at the blood welling from my broken lip. He was trying to help me, even in such a twisted way. Perhaps then, he maybe began to feel some warmth return to his body.

* * *

In the hot deserts of Dorne, heat seeping through my summer silks and warming my body, he told me of the warmth inside him.

"Gods, Little Bird, I never would've thought that I'd feel this heat inside me." His cool grey eyes, teeming with simmering emotions, pinned me to where I stood. Not two days past had he and I made Union true under the nearest Sept, and in those two days I had never felt such passion.

"I thought you'd said all heat from you had gone, many years ago."

"So did I think so. But then you had to go and ruin it."

I could only laugh in response. There was nothing to say to him, nothing to add. We both knew how he felt, what had happened - he didn't need to explain it. It was the first time in my life that I felt so comfortable with someone who wasn't my family.

* * *

Upon reaching Kings Landing, there was Jon, waiting for me with a nervous smile.

"Sansa."

"Jon."

I knew not what to say - what could I say? I'd behaved shamefully, shunned him and looked down on him when I should've treasured him as the family I had desperately wanted to see for years. I hugged him tightly, his body warming me more than the peach summer silks did on my body. Even after the snow was melted in Kings Landing, the spring temperatures were cold - temperate at best.

"I have missed you so very much, sister." He declared, holding my shoulders tightly as a few scandalous tears escaped my eyes.

"As have I, brother - or cousin, it seems." I drew my eye to the crown sitting in his black curls.

"Cousin I may be, but you will always remain my sister in my heart."

"Even..." Trepidation filled my heart, "even after the way I treated you?" I couldn't bear to look in his grey eyes; eyes I'd never noted to be so dark yet so lucid before.

"I cannot deny I was hurt. But I might be able to understand. I forgive you; you are my family - and family is scarce these days."

More tears escaped my eyes, and I clung tightly about his neck once more.

Family, some one who I had truly known as my own flesh and blood, was standing before me. For the first time in eight years, I could see someone who I had been dreaming of. A soothing heat flooded my body.

* * *

That night, as we sat down to sup in a his solar - just the two of us, trying to unravel our pasts together - he finally broached the subject that I was wondering if he'd ever even heard of.

"Your sworn shield is Sandor Clegane, correct?" He asked, and I knew that he didn't want to merely hear a simple answer.

"Yes, he is. He was kind to me when there were no friendly faces in this castle. He protected me by showing me how to lie, and see the reality before me, not insist on my naïve fairytales."

"And you... You love him?" He asked, with a sense of trepidation.

"Yes. We, unofficially, married recently. I wanted to get your blessing for a real marriage, if you can grant one."

He looked at me with widened eyes and high coal eyebrows.

Silence pervaded the room for a tense moment. "So you truly do love him?"

"Of course" I frowned. "For the past eight years, he has been the only man who would look at me with any sense of sympathy, or kindness, or empathy. He helped me to survive. Why would I not love the man who saved me?" I looked intently at Jon's face, searching for the disapproval I was certain would follow.

But not such thing occurred. Jon shooked his head, longer black hair about his shoulders now. He smiled. "He does love you." At my quizzical look, he added, "I asked him about this earlier." He looked like a cheeky youth when he said this. "Clegane said that he loved you more than whores love money, and the others love ice. For him, I take it, that's a great deal."

I smiled, restraining the urge to laugh loudly, and nodded. "Yes, yes it is."

He stayed silent for a minute more, and I finished the food on my plate - almost as welcome and missed as the company I was in.

"The consent will have to come from Danaerys, as long as she..." He needn't finish his sentence, it was common knowledge that the Mother of Dragons had been afflicted with disease, and was on the cusp of death. "But I am sure she will grant it. I am her nephew, her last living relative. She has a spot of favour for me."

He smiled, and he looked much younger than he had when we first reunited. I was glad of the heat that family gave my soul.


	3. 002. Caught

  _002\. Caught_

I felt as though I were falling for so long. So long that I almost felt my heart pass through my mouth more times than I can count, and the bile rose from my throat numerous times. I fell through my mother's fingers when I left for King's Landing. I fell through my Father's fingers when I sentenced him to death without knowing it. I fell through safety's fingers when I rejected the Hound's - no, Sandor's - offer to leave with him. I fell through chance's fingers when I left with Little Finger.

And so I fell, constantly being pushed and pulled here and there on my downward descent. By Cersei, by Joffery, by Tyrion and by Little Finger. Always ready to laugh at me, watch my misfortune as the only luck if ever had turned to dust.

But then I was saved, caught by the ever merciful face of the fate of war, and I landed in the soft snow of Winterfell. Of my burnt and crushed and hollowed home. I walked through the wall into the grounds of Winterfell, on the first day of peace, and looked up at the broken husk of my home, the remnants of my tattered life. It wasn't much, but it would do. It would take much building, but it would be home yet.

The Dragon Queen, ever merciful, ever kind to the once disaffected sister of her cousin, left me in some semblance of peace, lest she give herself a bad reputation in this bitter winter, and the war started up once more - against her. She let me rebuild my Winterfell, and named me master of it, and all that came with it. I can only imagine how she would be towards Arya, the kind, caring sister to Jon. I regretted that past terribly. I wished that none of my cruelty towards him had occurred, and we would be warm siblings.

But as it was, I was alone. No Bran to climb the walls. No Rikon to run around after him. No Arya to try and partake in the Men's training. No Robb to look up to. No Jon to look down on. I was alone, and I was falling once more.

As the castle stood, almost finished in the thawing Winter, the Hound once more stumbled into my life. With a deep injury and a high fever to match, he stumbled to the newly crafted shell of Winterfell, and collapsed on the threshold. He muttered my name, so they say, as well as a far more crass name for Arya. I nursed him with all the power I had. But mother was not here to guide me, and Septa Mordane was not here to give me advice. And the fluttery, butterfly-like girls from High Garden were not here to titter about this strange feeling stirred deep within my chest. Little Finger had once sworn to me that he had no heart, and he splayed his twitching fingers over me. I was inclined to believe him. I felt my stomach plunge, and I fell further into oblivion.

He awoke after three weeks, with a groan apparently, when I was working for the sake of Winterfell and the North. I knew I had to keep it in good shape, lest one of my brothers appear. He asked for wine to wet his rusty, brittle throat and asked for me in his very next breath.

I almost felt as though I had stopped in my fall, levitating in the air, frozen until the future became clear. He would not tell me if he was going to stay, despite my frequent inquiries. He would not tell me of the South. He would not tell me of my long lost sister, of Arya.

And yet, one night many moons later, he came to me. Not in a dream, as I was first certain, but in life. I felt as though I did that night in the Battle of Blackwater, and the stench of blood and fire and smog and death and wine and sweat stung my nostrils, and burnt the back of my throat. But I was a woman of nineteen, a ripe age to be a wife. I could stand up for myself, now.

He didn't want a song, though, he didn't want to hold me at the tip of his sword. He wanted me to love him, in the ways of the mind, and the flesh. I could feel him catching me, and peace returned to my somewhat beleaguered mind.

And when he kissed me and touched me in the corridor at dusk one day, as the new septa walked passed, we were caught. I felt caught.


	4. 019. Toy

_019\. Toy_

I felt like a toy in his presence. He radiated such power, a feeling that created inside me such a fear, and something... Something else. He could stand in the corner of a room and never make a sound, but I'd know he was there. I'd feel his steel gaze keenly in the back of my skull, pinning me in place. I felt like I was being controlled, like a puppet - I was always being pulled and pushed around by the others, but he was more skilled. He would watch me, and with his eyes control me, not with clumsy words or violence. With him, I almost felt willing. I didn't mind being his toy, I think.

He kept me so divided in opinion, I never could really form a true and unclouded judgment on him, not until it was too late. He was so polarising in the way he made me feel... I never quite understood it. It was never _love_... Not in the way mother had said, but he didn't make me scared either, not after I got to know him. I was in the courtyard, walking with the other ladies - some women from High Garden, I think. We weren't causing any harm, rather we were peacefully walking, not disturbing the birds nor the flowers. He appeared, in one of the corridors and in the darkness if the shade, paused there. I caught a glimpse of him and his eyes, and from then I felt his eyes on the back of my head, like an uncomfortable pin in my hair. I almost tripped into one of the ladies and forgot to pay attention to the other as we walked, and when she came to ask me my opinion on the story, I tried to stutter some stock response back, but I couldn't. I made hasty and transparent excuses, and left, feeling his eyes on me, in my very soul, all the while. The two ladies never sought me out again. Not many from High Garden ever did after that.

But then whenever I was with King Joffrey, as I still had to refer to him, he was almost always there with me, the piercing eyes a sudden comfort. He guided me through the conversations, I felt. He put me under the pressure I needed but never was too harsh then, and I felt like I was performing an intricate dance. It was an intricate dance, and I was merely a puppet. His eyes never made me stumble then - they guided me and made me more attentive than ever. I never minded being his puppet then, and when I'd been released from the stuffy, clammy and everything else awful chamber, he'd usually be following behind me, waiting until we were far enough away to walk beside me, with peaceful silence, or stifling conversation. I felt at a loss without him. I didn't mind being his puppet really - I don't think I did anyway.

As all things go in this gods-forsaken world now, after my father was... Betrayed, he was gone. In the midsts of smoke, and green fire, and sweat, and anger, and fear and terror and drink and blood he came to me - to my room to be more precise - and collapsed, covered in sweat and grime and blood and tinged with fire, more than usual. He spoke to me, with a rougher voice than usual, and spoke to me the question ice always debated:

"Come with me."

And I, being a fool and the bird too long caged and afraid of the fresh air answered with a 'no'. A no that I've always regretted. I watched him leave my room with a regretful feeling crawling at the pit of my stomach, and I've lived with it ever since.

Because now, no matter what happens, I'll never have that puppetry behind me. Even if it was sometimes for the worse, I'll never have the guiding eyes to help me through my trouble. I don't have that respect from anyone in King's Landing, and I can't expect it from anywhere else. I miss him, and I miss feeling like his toy.


	5. 048. Sympathy

  _048\. Sympathy_

He said that one day, I will have sons, and they will be killers. The thought made me choke on the air in my throat and I refused to acknowledge it. I didn't want to acknowledge it - it's too horrible a thought. To have given birth to and to raise a child who will one day become a man and kill another. But I don't know why I was so surprised, in hindsight, even the knights in fairy tales kill others for their fair maidens. Even the flower knight Ser Loras killed people, although he lost his rosy glow just as quickly as Joffrey lost his. All those at King'a Landing worry me. They were innocent children, once. They beat me and tortured me with words and what's worse - they were killers; all of them were killers. Even the beautiful Queen Cersei, and the more beautiful Queen Margery, who replaced her for a time before the Dragon Queen, were killers. They could've killed me with a flick of their wrist, and they killed many more that same way. Littlefinger said something similar to me too, at one point. I was dead to him by then, but it stirred nostalgia and the same horror within me. I vomited later that day, but only the bile from the pit of my stomach came up. The thought of it still terrifies me.

I try not to think of it, but I am surrounded by killers. Blood stains them all, I can almost see it as they walk in the moonlight, armour gleaming as though it's dripping with blood. All the men in Winterfell must have killed before. I have seen my own husband kill before - he is one of the most celebrated killers in the land. Or feared, perhaps, rather than celebrated. He was at least - but he has not been The Hound for some time, just Sandor Clegane, sword master at Winterfell. He was still a killer. My father was a killer too, and Jon, and my brothers Robb and Rickon. Even Arya is a killer. Bran is the only man I know who has not killed before, on account of his crippled legs. I do not sleep well at night when I think like that - when I think so hard and morbidly that I think I am sleeping next to a killer. A child murderer.

The only solitude I have when I think like that is my daughters - provided they have nothing of Arya's disposition - will be gentle. They'll be little doves, as he calls me little bird, and they'll be safe from the world of butchery. They won't have to watch grown men weep before their deaths at the hands of another. They'll sit inside, with pretty faces sewing pretty embroidery. They'll marry wealthy lords who are as kind to them as Sandor is to me. They won't be killers. They'll be gentle little doves, free to fly high above the muddy ground of our world.

But they'll have grandchildren, and they too might be killers. They might be as vicious as Lord Tywin Lannister, or as brutal as The Mountain that Rides.

Sandor offers me sympathy. He puts his arms around me and promises that no matter what, I'll be safe with him. He comforts me with words of peace and vows that our sons will be honourable, and our daughters will be little doves - just like I once was. His sympathy makes me feel better and pushes it out of my mind. I feel free, with a heavy weight off my shoulder and the haunting nightmares of Kings Landing and Cersei pushed out of my mind. Until the next time they ride into battle, and the thoughts are forced into my mind. Again.


	6. 014. La Belle et La Bête

_014\. La Belle et la Bête_

'And so the prince and princess lived in unity, happily ever after.'

As all books ended, it was entirely happy for the beloved pair of lovers, in their pastoral world of spring roses and autumnal quantities of food all year round. It made Sansa want to live in these worlds, entirely removed from the harsh snows of Winterfell, or this long journey to the South.

Her father, the Lord of Winterfell, newly appointed Hand of the King, or to her Mother, 'Ned', had stepped too far into Lannister territory, over money or food or textiles or secrets untold, Sansa didn't know, so now his retribution was to marry his fifteen-going-on-sixteen-year-old daughter off to the Kennel Master House's youngest son, the man they called 'The Hound' or, to others, merely a beast of a man.

The news had at first, made her curse the days she was born, scream out for her mother, scream out for her father, and sob deeply into her pillows. She adored the idea of marriage, it was merely to whom that she detested.

Slowly, over time, that horror had been replaced with fear as stories were spun of how cruel he was, how he would torture children or puppies, and kill any whom the King would ask. And with his failing health, the Hound, they said, would repeatedly listen to the Prince over the Baratheon King. She didn't even know his true name.

The journey to King's Landing after finishing her fourth and final book was dull, with little chatter and the mood more similar to a funeral march than a grand procession for the Hand's daughter.

Upon meeting the Hound, she could see where the stories stemmed from. His lips were burnt, twisted and ruined; the skin near the hairline on the right side of his face was pink and hard with burns, streaming from next to his eye almost to his jaw, charring away the skin until white bone shone through in patches. He may have been handsome had the coals not got to him, she thought, with shiny grey eyes, a serious face that had some odd sense of kindness in it, height that any man would envy, and a big, strong body that made her feel safer, just by a little.

And yet, despite how some string of her heart plucked like that of a gentle harp's, he was just as beastly as they said when it came to him as a person. He was anything but the princely ideals, with his cruel snark and bitter words. He was almost entirely opposite to the knight's code, with his foul mouth and filthy, crude language. In not too many words, he was awful - to almost everyone.

She dreaded the day that she would be given over to this beast, this many she'd barely even met at all.

And yet, despite what she may want, that day did come, with an obnoxiously bright sun and cruelly clear sky.

In her mind, she'd always imagined this day to be different. She'd be in Winterfell, surrounded by her family. Her mother would rouse her early, and she, with Robb's wife and a reluctant Arya, would dress her in beautiful white silks, and tie her hair in simple yet intricate knots of pure ruby. When she walked into the intimate Godswood, he, the knight or prince of her dreams, would be waiting with fair hair, unblemished skin, and lucid eyes full of love for her. And as she was cloaked in her Stark Direwolf for the final time, gentle snowflakes would fall all around them, as though the Gods themselves were blessing their marriage.

As it was, the day was as warm as a spring day, despite the red leaves. And these red leaves, as suitable as they may be for a Godswood, were not bloody hands, and did not form a holy place, but lined the way to the humble Sept where she'd marry, having been denied the grand Sept of Baelor. Her mother was not there to help dress her, and Robb did not yet have a wife - that Sansa knew. Instead, faceless maids with generic floral names dressed her in grey silks, for the colours of her dear house. The Direwolf on the Cape she wore looked little like the ferocious Direwolf that she'd dreamt Lady would've become. Only her father would accompany her into the Sept looking like a shadow of himself; her hair a rough comparison to a ruby and knotted in the ostentatious ways of the South.

Most devastatingly, there was no prince with love in his eyes waiting for her. Just a man, with a fierce facade and monstrous inside, waited for her, with nothing at all in his grey eyes. She almost thought he was angry with her when he placed the yellow Cape of House Clegane, adorned with three fierce dogs, around her neck. She almost quivered when he only place a rough, short kiss on the corner of her lips, instead of the romantic daydream she'd held onto so dearly until she entered this Sept.

Nothing could be done now. He was her husband, under the eyes of the Seven Gods.

Sansa had thought the worst was behind her, trapped in the remote castle that was the Hound's, her husband Sandor Clegane's, rooms in the rafters of a remote tower in the Red Keep. She was so far from her poor father, and even further from the snows and Wolves and joy of the North. And then, the King had died. And the Prince, Joffery, whom she'd once admired as a future husband, had taken over with strong puppet strings from his Lannister mother. From then on, nothing was safe for her.

There lay rumours that the King in the North was dead, that the Tully mother was dead, that the wildest, youngest son was away with the cannibals, that the bastard was no bastard at all, that the wisest son was a frozen cripple, and that the youngest daughter was a maddened, runaway wolf, off across the narrow sea. Sansa was the only Stark left, so they whispered, but the Prince treated her with no respect for that.

As for Sandor, their marriage was not exactly the fairytale that her parents had shown her. On their first night in the same bed, she had sat against the headboard, nervous in her seat and exposed in her shift. He'd laughed at her, a sound more akin to a beastly bark, and held a short knife to her throat. He told her to sing, sing as she'd once promised him - an occasion she remembered, and wanted to sing the song of Florin and Jonquil, yet the words for the Prayer of the Mother passed between her lips. No sooner had she finished did he plant a firm kiss on her lips, send a shock through her body, and left. The maids whispered that he'd left the Lady's bed and slept in another room, passed out from drunkness.

That is how it stayed between them, and nothing changed. Most nights, they would lay in the same bed, but a curse lay between them; a curse of silence on her, and something entirely more monstrous on him.

One day, that all changed. It was probably for the better.

 


	7. 024. Undecided

  _024\. Undecided_

As she stood there, for the thousandth time, watching that vile creature, the king, sentence another helpless merchant (or something like that) to death, she wondered what her life would've been like if she'd just gone with the Hound on that day.

She remembered it as though it had happened merely the night before. The bitter smell of wine and the overpowering stench of fear and death that clung to him like a leech had assaulted her nose as soon as he came close to her. She remembered the almost tangible smell of wine on his breath as he leant over her with a knife at her throat and whispered, in his gruff voice, his demand for the song she'd promised him.

Her lips had moved automatically as her fear took over her body. He'd asked her for 'Florian and Jonquil', and she'd started singing the song of the Mother. The soothing words she'd hoped would soothe him, and perhaps it worked - he'd left her not long afterwards. That was the last time she'd seen him in her life.

Often, she wondered if she'd been wise, saying 'no' to his offer. She wondered if she'd be happier than she was now; married to the imp, being harassed by the Queen Regent and Joffrey, pretending that she was just another one of the stupid little birds, twittering about the smallest things as though the world wasn't in a horrific way outside the walls of King's Landing.

Perhaps if she'd gone with him, she'd finally be happy. She would wonder that for the rest of her King's Landing days.


End file.
